I’m banning myself from posting here until I finish something for ChiPo, which you should totally visit on a daily basis.

Update: No one but Jen knows this but I failed this mission. I had to scrap the entire subject because I was starting to bore myself. Still working on it.

Nothing has been scarier than being between a median and a double-semi whose driver decided not to check the blind spot and head on over two lanes to occupy the space you’re in while you’re in it at 2 in the morning while it’s snowing. You don’t honk because you can’t ever seem to when you need to but if you do this dick isn’t going to know where it’s coming from and just might swerve the wrong way and make things worse. So in a split second you decide you’re in this on your own and you put on your left turn signal for reasons you won’t be able to figure out later because that’s so dumb next time don’t bother signaling your death ok? You head toward the median lane with the brake but you start swerving because there’s ice on the ground and you’re going way too fast to be there. You know you’re about to hit the median that now seems a mile high but the truck is half a fucking block long and all you see on the right are a bunch of little lights teasing you like ‘ha ha yes, oh yes, this truck is never going to end and you will die’. But you’re about to hit the concrete at 60 mph so you whisper ‘fuck it’ and decide to head back; if you’re going to die and no one else is on the road you’re going to clip this fucker because FUCK HIM..at the very least he’ll realize what he’s done and it’ll hurt his career. If you’re lucky you may spin so that the median hits the passenger side instead of yours. But somehow the truck ends inches from your bumper and you slow down to get back in the median lane and stop. This all happens in 5-10 seconds. Time is relative and about-to-die-before-you-got-to-see-Bjork-in-concert time is really fucking long.

Life doesn’t flash before your eyes because your focus is on the little details surrounding your pending death; there are tons of lights, all the yellows, oranges and reds intensify and it’s suddenly way too bright, perhaps this was the light? You inexplicably take off your right glove. You shiver. Then you finish singing the Joanna Newsom song that is ending because you can’t waste it; you appreciate that Good Intentions Paving Company would have been a great song to die to. You rub your eyes clear of tears. You get back on the road and wonder if you actually did die so you pinch yourself like in the movies. You do!

When you get home your cat is unusually happy to see you and it creeps you out. You think about the last people you saw and are glad you hugged them (I’m glad I hugged you, Jen). You think about making a bucket list. You think about making a fuckit list. You think about making a will. You think about getting things worth putting in your will. You realize 90% of the shit you worry about isn’t worth it and that you should learn to think about that episode of Roseanne where Darlene writes ‘To Whom It Concerns’ the next time you worry about your body image or to think about how great Badu’s upcoming album is going to be, like a handful of bucks, when you find yourself thinking of how shitty someone you don’t talk to anymore is.

And then because you’re 20-something you blog about it.

Last night a very sweet man came up to me and asked, if I didn’t mind, what ethnicity I was. I wouldn’t mind answering this question, I’m used to it at this point really, but having to drunkenly rattle off a lot of syllables in a loud bar is always annoying..and in addition to having to give my pedigree in the first place. On one hand yes, I guess I’m confusing because I’m not a color you’re used to seeing or my nose doesn’t fit in a certain box you have or some of my hair is really curly and some of it is straight but never in a million years would this guy ask my European Mutt American friend what she was. I texted Ash about it right afterward because you can always rely on your friends of color to have a very similar and recent experience to share. One of these days I’m going to say I’m an octaroon and see what happens..and I should probably just stop straight answering these questions but when you’re in a bar and Whitney is playing you don’t want to give a lesson in difference politics.

For the record; American Indian, African American, German American.

I self-diagnosed myself with having a perforated ear drum last night. I think it’s a pretty accurate diagnosis and I’m sure it was caused by sinus pressure. Right after I realized I had a perforated ear drum I slammed my finger in the dryer door. Right after that I realized I was about to put clothes in the dryer anyway so my additional injury should not have happened. Then I punched the air because I hate it when I’m stupid and strained my shoulder. When I get really really annoyed with myself the only way I can get through it is if I distance myself from the dummy and hand out punishment. Today I’m not allowed to chew gum.

I think I’m fighting a little case of food poisoning. And the fish I had definitely wasn’t worth it. My solution? If I’m going to be sick over some fish I’m going to at least down some sushi in between fits of abdominal cramps and vomiting as a reward for my troubles. Probably on par with my drinking whiskey to fight the flu but at least I’ll enjoy something over the next few days.

I’ve received a few handmade holiday greetings through the post from friends I’m very lucky to have because of the kind of people they are and the fact that they make amazing things. I on the other hand have never been able to focus enough on the process that is writing a letter, enclosing it, addressing it, stamping it and sticking it in the mailbox. It’s almost impossible for me and I can’t really explain why. Some people can’t clip their nails, some can’t get their oil changed, some can’t ever be on time. There’s a scene from ‘The Lovely Bones’ that I just finished reading (it was better than I thought it’d be) where the narrator describes her inability to meet a goal if she acknowledged the steps it took to get there, her example was that she couldn’t put on socks if she thought about how eventually she would have to tie her shoes.

I’ve decided to write a letter to someone once a week. A different someone every week. I have almost no personal needs that require deadlines. Beatrice is an easy cat, I don’t have a TV show that comes on at a certain time, and I eat whenever I’m hungry. Work makes you schedule a significant amount of your life around tasks that barely if at all affect you, but I never think about how great it would feel to make myself schedule in mandatory enjoyable moments. This may seem basic to tons of people but it’s a huge step for me. If you’d like a letter just email your address.

Is there a magical place where the lesbians have never seen The L Word and therefore have never once thought to put on a fedora, white tank/plaid shirt/t-shirt with stupid design on it, an ugly tie, a pair of Converse and diet until their hip bones poke out over their skinny jeans/plaid shorts? Because I’d like to go to there. Otherwise I’ll continue to go out, be annoyed with everyone around me for looking the goddamn same, get drunk, wonder if I’m going through early onset of libido loss, start complaining about it out loud, go home, run into a shitton of blogs showcasing photos of this brand of dyke (mostly of the white variety) because apparently people love the shit out of some skinny ass young dyke photos, then pass out. Then repeat.

I still have little appetite from whatever illness I had but what I ate was fatastic and fantastic. Then my mother and my sister left for a second Thanksgiving without having told me ahead of time but I took the opportunity to go see Precious..which was excellent. Someone texted me about a post-Thanksgiving party at U of Chi but I had no idea who it was so now I’m in sweats watching Thanksgiving episodes of Roseanne on TV Land drinking whiskey on ice while Beatrice sleeps off the turkey she got. Pretty good day.

I’ve been sick but in addition to that I’ve been sleeping horribly the past few months. Last night I realized that sometimes I have to sleep with my head at the foot of the bed for a couple days. I don’t know why it works but I slept wonderfully last night. When I got up today I realized that I probably have no hope of sharing my bed comfortably and continuously with anyone. Ever. I have a complicated 7 pillow situation that can’t be changed and another body fucks it up completely. As romantic as it’s supposed to be, sleeping on fat covered bones that get hot is just unacceptable. How do people do it? Why is it a good idea for two people to share a bed? When in our history did someone decide that 2 people should cut off each other’s space at night if they love each other? Does it come naturally to most people or is sharing a bed a social construct? Somewhere in a dusty old book Claude Levi-Strauss has probably answered this already.

So my sister and I got into what is apparently going to be a yearly screaming match..this time it got physical. It had to do with a stolen computer. And trust, the story is long but interesting.

So she had been mentioning some computer her cousin Alan (names changed) got for free from a friend. It was a Mac and he wanted her to give it to me to play around with and see if there’s anything wrong, so I agreed. Tonight she brought it and I looked at it, an almost brand new MacBook Pro. Nice, I’m jealous..I just got done talking to Stradi about getting one. Alan asked her to ask me to clean it out and get it ready for sale on eBay (either him or my sister thought to ask me to use my own account to do it, which was warning sign #1). I start moving pictures and stuff to the trash and notice A LOT of porn. Like 3 gigs worth. Then I notice school papers. Stuff someone would have deleted if he were giving away or selling a computer (#2). The story was that Alan got the computer because this friend got 2 new ones from his gf and his mother, so he gave this $1.5k computer away free (#3). I ask my sister about the admin password and she tells me that Alan told her he doesn’t have it and that he never shuts the computer down or logs out or something (HUGE #4). That’s when I decide to do some investigating.

I looked deeper and found the guy’s name, Ben, and that he was in the suburban area. I Googled ‘stolen MacBook Pro’ in his area and got nothing. At this point I’m still not convinced this is more than a hunch. But then I look at his browser history..more porn and lots of Facebook links. I go to Facebook and see his email populated in the login, I try to log in as him to see if he wrote any notes about a stolen computer, which now that I think about it is a bit shady. Couldn’t get in so I log in as myself and search for him by his email. He comes up and it says we have 3 common friends. WHAT?! They’re all from high school and none of them went to college with him. So I look at more of the Facebook links in his history, went to one by another classmate who posted an obituary for another classmate via a note. I go to her profile in the hopes of finding more info about the death and come upon a recent status update ‘in love with Macs..now I just need to get one’..so I’m back on track with the investigation. I think, well if they’re Facebook friends there’s a tiny possibility he made a comment about his being stolen and sure enough he replied ‘mine was recently stolen’. Time frame for all this fits perfectly. I look in my HS yearbook and he was in my class. I don’t have much memory of high school besides the Stradi muff diver shirt incident but apparently he was a tennis star.

I’m in a pickle because my sister just recently reconnected with her father’s side of the family. She spends all her free time with this cousin and trusts him with her life..I can’t just go up to her and say he’s a thief. So I explain briefly how I got to thinking this is stolen property. She says Alan has no idea and tries to call him several times. I’m very interested in the story he’s going to give her. A few minutes pass and she says he said he got it from a co-worker at a tennis club, the tennis club he has been working at for 3 months. So not only is this not a friend anymore, but a co-worker that he’s been working with for only 3 months that gave away his MacBook Pro. He also says that Ben is the guy that gave it to him but that he hasn’t been able to get in touch with him.

My sister says she’s going to give the computer back to Alan and hope that he figures it out, that he’ll just have to call her and tell her when he clears it up. At this point I don’t feel ok leaving it up to someone whose story has been dubious from the beginning and tell her I want to send a message to Ben and ask him about his computer situation. Not only is getting this guy’s computer back to him the right thing to do but I don’t want to be complicit in some theft that may come back to me. She tells me that’s unnecessary and I stand my ground..I don’t think it’s wrong to contact this guy and ask a simple question. So it escalates from ‘unnecessary’ to ‘nosy’ to ‘dangerous’ and everything in between. I keep repeating myself, ‘all I want to do is make sure this computer isn’t the one Ben’s talking about without identifying your cousin as the/a thief’.

She completely flips out and tells me I’m accusing her cousin of being a criminal without knowing the full story (which she claims she has a better grasp of, HA) and that all I see is black and white. She inserts her favorite line ‘I don’t want to argue with you’ and then proceeds to keep on yelling. I keep repeating myself and she keeps escalating her thoughts. Eventually she starts insulting me as a person. This is still all because I want to ask Ben about the particulars of his computer being stolen because I’m pretty sure any logical person would find this situation dubious. She starts saying that I’ve been coddled my entire life, that I’ve always gotten what I want, that she’s been through things and she’s an adult and I’m a kid, then she says I have issues, that I’m nuts and I start screaming at her back and tell her to get the fuck out because 5 minutes ago she told me she didn’t want to argue with me and now she’s just throwing insults around like it has to do with anything at hand. I’m so mad that I’m shaking, the last time I felt like that it was WITH HER a year ago when she managed to blame me and my mother for some administrative error of the hospital my father was in because apparently someone dying wasn’t dramatic enough for her.

She’s just fucking insane. And worse than that she’s illogical, she’s dramatic and she never thinks she’s wrong. So when I told her to get the fuck out she postured, said ‘OR WHAT?’ (yeah really, this woman is 44 folks) and I got up and physically moved her out the door. Which of course made her go extra crazy and she kept screaming. At this point I know she’s lost it and desperate because she says ‘you’re such an elitist, college educated kid you don’t know the real world like I do, you went to high school in Gurnee and now you’re too high, I thought you of all people would be more liberal minded but you’re like a fucking Republican’. She became a walking, talking version of a typical YouTube commenter. I laughed. Because this is still because I want to ask Ben the owner/past owner of the computer who is claiming to have a stolen computer, a question. And because this is an anti-gay anti-choice woman calling ME a Republican. She took the computer because if I would’ve stopped her there might have been blood. And her cousin now knows I know he has this guy I know’s computer..he’s gonna have to do the right thing or clear it up. I talked to my mother, who actually gets it, and she agrees with me, to give it a few days then contact him because it’s the only way to make sure.

As far as my sister and I, it’s unfortunate because this’ll hurt my mother who hates family drama. It’s going to be a tense holiday season and the last thing in the world I want to do is let my sister ruin it for her. But I never liked the way she treats people, including my mother, when they disagree with her. I don’t have to pretend to like her anymore..she called me every name in the book and all this time I deferred to her seniority for everything. This I find is what happens when you let people walk all over you..they NEVER see the error of their ways on their own and sometimes it takes a loud and emotionally violent event to open up the cold world to them. Some of them adjust and apologize and change..but some may react like a rabid whirling dervish and end it by calling you a Republican. As ridiculous as all this was, it hurt. And that weight of pretending to like her being lifted leaves a sense of loss, like a phantom limb. It’s sister weight, it’s supposed to be there and it’s not anymore.